possible & not so possible futures

Down For Everyone Not Just You

August 8, 2017

This episode is a little different than other episodes. As many of you know, Flash Forward is my second job. My first job is at ESPN, where I recently helped launch an audio documentary series called 30 for 30 Podcasts. Please go check that out, even if you don’t like sports I promise there’s something for you. My episodes are numbers three and four in the series, and they’re both out, and if you like the weird stuff I do on this show I think you’ll probably enjoy them.

Trying to make two highly produced shows at once is hard though! So for my mental health, this month’s Flash Forward is a bit of a remix. The top of the show is new, it’s an interview with Kit Walsh, who is a staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation where she works on free speech, net neutrality, copyright, coders’ rights, and other issues that relate to freedom of expression and access to knowledge. Then, you’ll hear a remixed version of an old episode about the future of the internet, and what it would take for us to abandon the world wide web.

The remixed episode after my interview with Kit is all about what it would take to lose the internet. And to figure that out I talked to two historians of digital culture at NYU. Laine Nooney studies the history of computers and video games. Finn Brunton studies how and why different technologies get adopted (or don’t).

Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. Special thanks this episode to Lena Groeger, Sisi Wei, Colin Schultz, and my mom. Yes, that was my actual mom.

If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. I love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool.

And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! We have a Patreon page, where you can donate to the show. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.

That’s all for this future, come back next month and we’ll travel to a new one.

Down For Everyone Not Just You was last modified: June 1st, 2018 by Rose

1 comment

Losing internet for political reasons is actually the most likely in my experience! I lived in Egypt during the Arab Spring (2011) where the people began a revolution through social media and organized mass protests through the internet to throw out President Mubarak. The government shut off the internet in the hopes of silencing the revolution. I could see that happening again, it’s not terribly difficult to shut down cell phone service or the internet, and if Social Media Revolutions started in the western world I could see this happening again…